Sound localization and speech identification in the frontal median plane with a hear-through headset

A hear-through headset is formed by mounting miniature microphones on small insert earphones. This type of ear-wear technology enables the user to hear the sound sources and acoustics of the surroundings as close to real life as possible, with the additional feature that computer-generated audio signals can be superimposed via earphone reproduction. An important aspect of the hear-through headset is its transparency, i.e. how close to real life can the electronically amplied sounds be perceived. Here we report experiments conducted to evaluate the auditory transparency of a hear-through
headset prototype by comparing human performance in natural, hear-through, and fully occluded conditions for two spatial tasks: frontal vertical-plane sound localization and speech-on-speech spatial release from masking. Results showed that localization performance was impaired by the hear-through headset relative to the natural condition though not as much as in the fully occluded condition. Localization was affected the least when the sound source was in front of the listeners. Different from the vertical localization performance, results from the speech task suggest that normal speech-on-speech spatial release from masking is unaffected by the use of the hear-through headset. This is an encouraging result for speech communication applications.